


A Garden for the King

by beautifulterriblequeen



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Guilt, Suicidal Thoughts, Sweet, elves being elves, psychosomatic agony, romantic loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 10:53:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17579501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifulterriblequeen/pseuds/beautifulterriblequeen
Summary: The Battle of the Five Armies is over, and it is time for the elves of Mirkwood to return home. As the painful truth of how Thranduil has led his people astray, chased away his only son, and gotten many of his people slain in battle sinks in, he is forced to contemplate how he, one of the First Children, got to this desperately low point. Will he survive his own undoings long enough to become the king his people need him to be?





	1. The Forest Glen

**Author's Note:**

> This work has three chapters. I'm definitely not killing anyone off at the end of this chapter, so rest easy.

Thranduil stood in the ruined gates of the city of Dale in a pale fog of grief, matched by chill tendrils that teased their way among the old ruins of the once-proud city of Men. His heart was no longer cold, though. It was _hot_. It burned. It lived and writhed within his chest, and he knew not what to do to make it stop. Its once steady beat had for some days now been echoing like so many war drums, stomping and shuddering, hurling sudden, spasming cries that echoed up into the darkness of his mind. So he endured it in aching, dizzy silence, as he had endured the slow concretion of the chrysalis he had built around it over the last two and a half thousand years. The hard planes of his emotional armor had shattered, and now they pinched, stabbed, drove deep, and he could not twist away from the agonizing spines of his own creation.

He had hidden away his heart as a measure of protection. He could not fathom an endless life of such agony as he felt after his wife was slain. He simply could not survive it—he had loved her far too dearly. But he had a people, a son, who needed him. A land that needed tending, guarding. He could not perish, waste away and die as elves sometimes did. He had a duty. He was _needed_. But his heart, he thought, was less needed, now that his beloved had fallen. Surely his people would survive equably—even thrive—if they were led by a king filled with the cool burn of reason alone.

Oh, how wrong he had been.

 Tauriel, subdued and slow of step after the loss of her Kili, offered to find him a fresh mount to replace his elk, but he could not bear the thought of burdening another innocent life with the unbalanced weight he bore.

No. He would walk home. He was mostly certain he spoke the idea aloud, though his ears heard only the keening winter wind and scraps of elven prayer songs. Better those mourning sounds, though, than the cries of his people as they fell in battle, never to rise again.

As one, the elves of Mirkwood dismounted behind him. If their king would walk all the way across the wild lands and through deep forests, in mourning for all that he had lost, then they would, too.

Their silent concert laid another weight in his heart. His people stood beside their mounts, beside the wagons once laden with food for the Laketown refugees, but which now bore only the dead, tended and wrapped, ready for their final journey home. Bright, eternal lives, cut short by his blindness and greed. By his _pride_. Thranduil turned his back to them, unable to bear the strain of their loss atop his own. Unable to face the will of Iluvatar—that the First Children should live eternal—desecrated by his own hand. The cries of his dying warriors shouted forth in the unlit silence hidden behind his eyes. He shut his lids against their faces, but it did nothing to abate the molten guilt that burned within him.

_Is this what it is to wish to die?_

“I will walk every step of this journey myself.” If he still wanted to die when he set foot in his own kingdom, then perhaps that was the will of Iluvatar, and who was he, a mere failed king, to challenge the supreme god of Arda?

He took the first step on the road home. He took the second step. His burden neither lightened nor crushed his heart, so he found the courage to take a third step, and then a fourth. His people silently marched behind him.

After an hour’s walk, in which the world seemed to alter not one whit and Thranduil forgot that the seasons had ever turned at all, the wintry fog gave way to a chill breeze that scraped the brown hills clean. Their gentle mounds, shrouded under bronzed grass that lay like a funeral tapestry, ancient and honorific, extolling the deeds of the fallen, seemed to him an endless field of buried dead. Thranduil’s heart spasmed, and his breath caught painfully. He stumbled to a halt in the middle of the road, hand pressed against his breastplate. It offered no protection from a wound dealt from within.

Tauriel was at his side in an instant. She braced him with her strong arms and said, “My lord, you are unwell. Shall we pause until you have recovered? Perhaps we should not have left Dale in such haste.”

In his mind’s eye, Thranduil saw a single firefly spring to light. Its warm glow threw back the eternity of darkness, revealing a deep forest glen. Its glow soothed him, and at the same time prodded his shuddering heart to wake and strive. He longed for the velvet blackness when the flicker rested, as he only wished to rest, too. But with every beat of his heart, the flicker returned to life.

_A coruscating torment, to love life and wish its cease. Ah! What is this agony?_

“My lord?” Tauriel prompted.

“I am well enough, Tauriel. I thank you. Perhaps…” The firefly flickered insistently. “Perhaps you would walk with me.”

“Of course, my lord.” Tauriel promptly took up position at his right hand, gazing alertly for threat and movement. She found none and glanced to her king.

Thranduil was so bone-weary that a smile surfaced on his face without his permission. “Word has long traveled before us, Tauriel. The Necromancer has fallen, and the Battle of the Five Armies has been given to the forces of light. No threats await us. I merely ask for your company. If it please you.”

“It—it does, my lord. I—thank you.” Tauriel’s gratitude stuttered to a halt, and she looked down at her boots.

As they began to walk again, Thranduil could spare no sympathy for her discomfiture. He had caused it, along with all the other problems his people endured, by hardening his heart against all true affections. But he had faith that her heart would recover far faster than his own. She had cared for those around her, while Thranduil had merely used them to his own ends.

He forced a lacquered shard from his shattered heart, felt it spear his chest on the way out. It landed in the forest glen and spawned a second firefly. “You miss my son.”

Tauriel’s smile was brilliant, tinged with sadness. “Yes, my lord. He was… a true friend.”

“He was true, indeed. I feel his absence so insistently that I fear I carry his impression entire upon my soul.” Thranduil kept his eyes forward, but he could not help but see the way Tauriel’s head whipped toward him in surprise.

“Legolas is the finest of elves, my lord. He will make you proud, no matter where his path may lead.”

“Yes.” Thranduil’s voice was a breath of surrender. “To wherever it may lead.” His heart throbbed and bled. The fireflies danced atwinkle in his mind. He put one foot in front of the other. Gradually, the sun moved westward. The road curved south, then west, then north. The fireflies’ rhythm, mixed with his footsteps, brought a song to mind, and before he could muster the energy to stop himself, he was singing it.

His low baritone carried back across the column of Mirkwood elves, and after a moment of pleased and tender surprise that rippled forward and caressed his mind, they took up his song. A lament for the lost. The last time he had heard it was at his wife’s remembrance gathering, at which time he had sworn that he would never hear its elegiac notes within his realm again. His heart had begun lacquering itself that very night. Before the gates of Erebor, the lacquer had broken, it had lanced his soul, drawing out that old agony.

He sang in lament for his wife, for his neglected son, for the elves he had led to their doom before the gates of Erebor. For his younger self, who had known no better than to deliver his kingdom into a half-life along with his heart.

His chest spasmed again, more sharply, and Thranduil began of a sudden to fear that he was not going to reach the Woodland Realm. He clutched at his gleaming breastplate. “Why does it hurt so much?” he gasped, echoing Tauriel’s words as she had held her dead beloved in her arms.

“My lord, you must rest!” Tauriel’s voice carried alarm, though it reached Thranduil’s ears but faintly as the white fog returned, obscuring the glimmers of his fireflies.

Thranduil thought he nodded assent, but he wasn’t sure. The entire world was fading to white. Hands led him gently, pressed him into a padded chair. The wind abated. A warm cup was placed in his hands, and he was urged to drink.

Some time later, Thranduil came to himself. He was seated in his own golden tent, holding a slender, silver cup of mulled wine. A fire crackled merrily from within a filigreed grating set atop a ring of delicately carved guardstones. Shadows against the tent told him that two elves guarded him, and that the low winter sun had not yet set. His armor had been set aside on a stand, leaving him in comfortable white robes. Someone had even replaced his boots with soft woolen slippers that bore twining vines of green.

Where had he been? How long since he had stood on the road? How many of his people had seen him in such distress?

His chest throbbed as if a desperate animal were trapped within him and sought escape before it perished. Out of long habit, he raised the cup to his lips. Before he could sip at the strong, spiced wine, he stopped. He glared at his distorted reflection in the silver and saw a baleful blue eye twisted into an accusatory beam. Too long he had hidden in the winecups of Men. He had no wish to seek such refuge tonight.

He tried to tear his gaze from his own reflection, but he found that he could not. The longer he gazed, the more monstrous he appeared to himself. He felt his heavy brows droop in sorrow and accusation, but in the curve of the cup they gave his appearance a low-ridged viciousness, a base bestiality. He heard muttering before realizing it was his own voice that reached his ears: “No, no, _no_!”

In a fit of desperation, Thranduil rose unsteadily from his chair and, with a staggering step, hurled the silver cup toward the fire. Wine sizzled against the grating and splattered bloody drops against the golden silk of the tent wall.

Stains and burns. Damage. Was there no end to the destruction he caused? No space so mundane, so unimportant, that he could not mar it with his intemperate flailings?

 _You feel too much, Thranduil. It is unseemly. Learn to temper yourself_. His father’s words returned not to comfort him, but to taunt. A pained moan escaped Thranduil’s teeth, and he nearly lost his balance. His head throbbed, setting his fireflies into a panic, and the shards of his heart armor fairly shivered, turning his stomach. _Are you a Man, then, my son? Wild in heart, rash in thought? Worthy only to live a certain span and then perish?_

The spiraling horror and self-loathing within him drove Thranduil from his tent with a hand sheltering his eyes and the shaken tears that edged them. Though he dared not speak for fear of crying out, he managed to wave off his guards and oriented himself to the nearby tree line.

Shelter. Refuge. _Help me._

Slipper-footed, Thranduil braced himself against the narrow fir trees and pressed deeper into the woods. Delicate branches caught at his long hair, mussing its silken perfection, and he cared not. Darkness drew its cloak around him until his white robes glowed like the moon. Yet no solace embraced the king. His father’s voice had gone silent, but every tree stood witness to a fallen elf, an Erebor grief that need not have come to pass. Silently, his sins surrounded him. Bracketed him. He could escape them no longer.

The trees marked the moment Thranduil stumbled to his knees and landed heavily in a thick bed of moss. They rang with the taut, rumbling cry of agony that ripped from his throat as he clutched at his head, knotting his fingers in his long white locks. Sheltering branches, in pity, drained the air of his sorrow, letting him grieve alone and unheard. He would not want his people to hear him suffer. He would not want them to see their king brought so low. His decisions had punished them enough already, and they could not be undone.

When his lungs were empty and burning and his throat was raw, the king collapsed forward onto his hands. Tangled tendrils of white fell about his face. His chest stabbed and burned, drawing a keening cry from his tortured throat and tears from his wet-lashed eyes. His long fingers dug into the moss, wrenching it from its anchorage, and with shaking fists he crushed it until its scent reached his nose, earthy and moist.

With a shuddering gasp, he let the fistfuls of moss fall from his hands. _I kill everything I touch._ Every _thing. I am anathema to my people, to Iluvatar himself. My father was right. I should die here, for I do not deserve to live if I only bring destruction! My people deserve a better rule than I can offer. Legolas shall return and rule them. He will be a far better king than I have been. Surely my people deserve his love, if I do not. And he will know how to love them._

Thranduil toppled to the moss as a shudder of pure cold shot through his body. _Yes_. He welcomed the fading of his grace. _My final gift to the world shall be my absence._ He curled his body tightly, filled with a desolate nostalgia at the thought of losing himself. Old, bright memories—his father’s regal smile, the sparkling sunlight of his childhood, his beautiful wife’s laugh as she held a newborn Legolas—played against his eyelids. Another cold spell shivered through him, leaving his fingers numb.

Then, suddenly, he thought of Tauriel. She would find him. He should not force her to remember him knotted like so much riverweed. She deserved better. Everyone deserved better from him. But he would have to disappoint them. This one small thing, he could still do for Tauriel.

He rose with trembling, chill limbs and knelt, easing his white silk into a delicate puddle around him, smoothing his tangled hair off his shoulders. His fingers felt like ice as they brushed against his cheeks.

“To be given warmth for such a time, and then to release it back into the world. May it serve its next life better than it has this one.” Thranduil closed his eyes. His body sank into a sea of tingles, and he felt himself fade from the world.


	2. The Dark Seed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lady Galadriel finds Thranduil in mortal distress and offers him an unconventional method of assistance--and an ultimatum.

A warm light upon his lids drew Thranduil back from the edge of dissolution.

“Wait but a little, Thranduil Oropherion, for I would speak with you ere you depart.”

The low, rich female voice teased its way into Thranduil’s ears, slid along his skin like butterfly wings, and warmed his very spine. He gasped, arched his back, and opened his eyes, feeling infused with grace and life as he had not in half his lifespan.

Before him, deep in the sheltering woods, stood the Lady Galadriel, alight with the grace of the Eldar and radiant with joy and charm. Beneath her deep twilight cloak, her gown sparkled with the gold and orange of late autumn, and her long hair cascaded in gentle waves past her slender waist. She extended a hand to him, and Nenya winked upon her finger.

Thranduil’s attempt to ward off her kindness only resulted in his hand trembling before hers. “My lady, you do me far too much kindness. I... please…” To his horror, tears began leaking from the corners of his eyes. He fell upon one hand in the moss, with the other covering his grief from her sight.

Her voice was a balm, filling his ears with a blessed kinship he had not felt in an age. “Dear cousin, I have no wish to burden you further. I was drawn to you by the weight of those burdens you already bear.” The lady knelt in the moss beside him, and it cradled her weight with delight. Her strong arms surrounded his shoulders, and she rested his ear against her heart. It beat strong and sure, slow and steady. Eternal. “Let me help you.”

Entirely undone by her glorious presence, a sunrise of perfection in contrast to his debased failures, Thranduil laughed out of utter despair. He leaned against Galadriel for a long moment, wiped the tears from his eyes, and then knelt back where he had waited to die. He placed his hands atop his thighs with precision and met her eyes. The worlds she contained within them dazzled his sorrow.

“I would gladly accept your help, my lady cousin, if I but knew what to ask for. But I fear there is no hope for me. Neither of us have the power to change the past, and alas, that is where all my sins lie. They, and their seeds. They will grow to choke the life out of my people. I have already slain many out of sheer pride and greed. I know not how to save the rest from a fate I can clearly see approaching.” A maudlin laugh rose in his throat, nearly choking him. He spat it forth to be rid of it. “Can you not see it? My prideful failure? Truly, it is a glory to behold. Perhaps it shall grow so great that I alone shall be responsible for the ending of the entire Third Age—”

Galadriel’s hand whipped out and struck Thranduil across the cheek, knocking him to the moss and tumbling him over twice.

Affronted, disheveled, and stunned, he pushed himself up onto his hands and glared at her.

Her smile lit the forest hollow with sunbeams, teasing him just a little. “Why are you angry with me for causing you but a little pain, dear cousin, when you were, just now, so busily dying? Do not think you can avoid your fate so easily. And do not presume such importance. Such can happen when you lock yourself away and forget that the rest of the world carries on without you, but I assure you, King Thranduil of the Woodland Realm, that you are in no way capable of ending the Third Age alone.”

The shock of his tumble brought reality a little closer to hand, and he recalled fully whose presence he was in. His ire faded, slacking his cheeks with shame. “Forgive me. Please. I am in no way myself. You have seen something that must come to pass?”

“I have. If you perish here, Legolas will indeed return to the Woodland Realm. He will rule fairly and justly. And in the events that _do_ bring about the end of the Third Age, he will fall defending its borders. And then all will be lost to Shadow.”

A different kind of cold seized Thranduil’s heart as fear began to numb his pain. Galadriel had lied to him—he was _indeed_ capable of ending the Third Age by himself. But only if he died here, leaving his son to struggle and fail alone as well. “I will not consign Legolas to the fate I built for myself. What must I do?”

“Live, King Thranduil. You must _live_.”

Thranduil stood and shook twigs and moss from his robes. He had not slipped beneath the soil quite yet. A dark chuckle began deep in his belly, below the aching stab of his heart, and made its way past his lips. He returned to Galadriel’s side and settled himself neatly. "I finally know what to ask of you.”

“And what is that?”

“No,” he countered, with a faint gleam in his eye, “that is _my_ question. What _is_ that? What is _living_?” His hand seized a soft fall of silk over his heart. “I have forgotten how. Please, I will do all that I can for my son. For my people. I thought, until now, that my death would serve them best. You say it will not. But I cannot go on as I am. I am not a good king. I bring my people only death. And they deserve anything but that from one who would lead them.”

Galadriel studied him for a long moment. Thranduil felt like a broken trinket beneath her eternal blue gaze, but he held it until his eyes watered, for the sake of his son. Then she spoke. “Give me your hands.”

They settled across from one another, cradled by the moss, and he rested the backs of his hands in her palms. Together, they breathed in the mossy air and the darkness. Together, they breathed out pain, grief, and loss.

She cupped his hands against each other. “You spoke of seeds. Let us plant one here. The seed of your sins.”

Thranduil’s blue eyes darted to hers in fractured guilt. His voice was a breath of despair. “Am—am I so broken that there is no healing me? Must I poison the very earth itself?”

Her reply was strong and cool. “You are one of the First Children of Iluvatar. The weight of your grace has consequence. Restoring it has a price. Either your people will pay it, or this seed will. The seed is easier to manage than the entirety of the Woodland Realm. I am sorry, Thranduil, but we are beyond perfection now. As you have been for some time. Now, attend.”

The warmth of the lady’s hands seeped into Thranduil’s chill fingers as he drew his sorrow and guilt into the space between his palms. He pictured the faces of every warrior who had died before the gates of Erebor. He stitched their long lives together with a thread made from a lifetime of neglectful distance from his son, and then he bound the fragile little bundle within a shell of stone and dead roots.

“For so did I encase myself,” he murmured. “A throne hall barren and dead, with no soil in which life may root. May you find your way out, as I seek to do.” A few more fireflies flickered to life in his mind, and a painful tug within his heart seemed to stitch up one of its gaping wounds.

“Now see, King Thranduil, what you have wrought.” Galadriel turned his palms up.

He gazed down on the dark red seed that lay too heavily in his hands. It bore sins and sorrows and guilts unhealed. It felt slick against his skin, as if with the blood of the fallen, and it smelled faintly of dust and tears. Thranduil’s stomach turned at the sight of his sins made corporeal. “It is not a good thing, my lady.”

“It is not. But you _are_. You must separate yourself from it or be overwhelmed.”

“Must I plant it, though? Can I not lock it away in a barren cave forever?”

Galadriel’s smile was soft, her eyes full of wisdom.

Thranduil twitched back, glanced down. “Ah. That tactic has not succeeded thus far, no.”

“If you carry it any further with you, it will seep back into your soul. You _must_ leave it here, Thranduil.” Her voice was a command that echoed in his head. He dared not disobey.

Wordlessly, he dug through the moss with two long fingers and loosened the soil beneath it. Rich and loamy, the earth beneath the fir forest was deeply fertile. Surely the seed would sprout. But into what form of plant? He hesitated, the heavy red seed caught between his fingertips.

“You perceive now, do you not, the threat that your heavy cares portend?”

He did. He saw the future as it would unspool if he planted the seed. Just as clearly, he saw the fate that awaited his people if he did not. Death, dissolution, destruction, devastation.

_The world, or my selfish cowardice._

Thranduil plunged the seed into the earth and buried it there. He covered the spot with his hand as if pressing against a wound within his own flesh. Resurgent cries of the dying, scattered before the gates of Erebor, filled his ears, and he winced. “What have I done?” he breathed. “What have I _done_?”

Galadriel set her eyes on his and pinned him there with the weight of her ageless presence. “You are yet young, Thranduil. There is much you do not know, even about yourself. Your intemperate love has led you to this day. But it may also raise you to be the greatest king the Woodland Realm has ever known.”

Thranduil’s brows bent, baffled. “How? How can my greatest weakness become such strength?”

“Embrace it, cousin. You have spared yourself nearly three millennia's worth of pain, and it has fallen upon you all at once. Find the seed of your love, Thranduil. Plant it. Nurture it. Guide it. You will find a strength you have never known, and it will save your people.”

Thranduil swallowed hard. The task seemed impossible, especially in his broken condition. “I…”

“Fear not, my dearest cousin. You have the time you need. This day, you are delivered of a terrible lesson.” She stood and offered him a hand. When he took it, she lifted him effortlessly to his feet. Delicately, she plucked a fragment of moss from his white locks and smoothed them against his shoulder. “And tomorrow, you shall be delivered of it again. And again on the following day, and so forth, until the day you set foot in the Woodland Realm again.”

Thranduil’s gaze flew to the planted ground. He could feel the call of the sorrow seed throbbing against his mind. “Every day? Is not once enough?”

“No. A great evil is coming, Thranduil, and you must be in a ready state of mind to battle it, for if you do not, then the fate of your people will be no different than if you had perished here this day. _You_ must stand against the darkness, Thranduil. And to do that, you must find your light once again.” Her hand rested gently over his heart. “Do you feel the difference?”

Thranduil breathed in slowly. A dozen fireflies flickered in his mind, and his heart did not pain him quite as much. A noticeable difference, but only just. How many seeds would it take to rid himself of these burdens he had layered himself with? “I am glad, of a sudden, that I am walking home. I will need the time.”

“Take it. You will not wish to plant any of these seeds within your borders.”

In cautious thanks, Thranduil clasped his hand atop hers. “I will remember your words, Lady Galadriel. I thank you for stopping me from my desperate act, so that I might hear them.”

Her eyes flicked past his shoulder. “Your captain approaches. I will leave you in her care. She has a strong heart full of light. Be well, cousin, for you are dear to me.” She reached up and drew his head down, pressing her forehead against his.

Thranduil closed his eyes at the warm touch of her skin, a healing balm that soothed his chaotic edges and whispered of a blessed forest canopy. He lost himself in the bliss of her spirit, and they communed in the space between hearts.

“My lord, you should not wander alone. We have been worried about you.” Tauriel’s voice broke through Thranduil’s contemplation.

He looked over at Tauriel and realized that Galadriel had departed. The forest was dark once more. His grief flew in and hung from his shoulders like a weighted cloak. “Yes. I am sorry. I needed—” He hesitated, feeling the pull of the sorrow seed. “I only needed a moment to myself. I… it is hard…”

Tauriel’s brows bent and dropped as his voice gave out. She raised a tentative hand. “My lord, you need say no more. We know you shoulder a terrible burden on our behalf, and we, your loyal people, would do all we can to ease it for you. Please, do not suffer alone.”

Thranduil’s heart stabbed at him once again, and a bitter smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Is not all suffering, by its nature, alone? Come, you may escort me back. My sorrow is done with me for today.”


	3. The Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thranduil waits too long one evening, and Tauriel must offer emergency assistance and become privy to his secret ritual. What they create together will change him forever.

The road to the Woodland Realm was not long, but Thranduil led his people in a slow, lamenting march, and the days of winter dragged by as leaves tumbled by a reluctant wind. He only traveled during the short hours of daylight and never strayed far from a wooded area, calling for a halt each evening with plenty of light to set up camp and never more than a short walk to the tree line.

“The trees give him solace,” Tauriel said on more than one occasion, as others worriedly asked after their king. “He is improving, though. You see it, too, do you not? He sings more days than he does not, now. All will be well. In time.”

Thranduil heard her voice outside his tent as he tugged on his boots one morning. He furnished himself with a single bite of _lembas_ bread, drank some fresh spring water from his silver cup, and pulled aside the tent flap. Its golden silk whispered in his hand. “Do I truly sing more days than not?” he asked her.

She turned suddenly and offered a bright smile, though it faded quickly. “Yes, my lord, I believe you do. It does us all much good to hear it.”

Thranduil turned to the elves lingering nearby and waved them permission to take down his tent and pack it. “And why is that?” he asked his captain of the guard, leading her back toward the road.

“I only mean that there has been little enough singing in the Woodland Realm for many years, my lord. Aside from the Feast of Starlight, the wood elves do not indulge in song overmuch. I… I miss it. So thank you, my lord, for your gift of song. It pleases us all, and many would want you to know that.”

Thranduil stepped onto the frosty stones of the broad way and stopped. “They do?”

Tauriel’s hesitant smile flickered across her face once more. “Of course they do, my lord. They love you, as do I. You are our king. We wish only for your recovery and happiness. As we wish for ourselves. We must grow together as a people, my lord, or we will not grow together at all.”

Touched, Thranduil set a hand on Tauriel’s shoulder. His deep blue eyes searched hers. “When we depart today, you will walk with me again.”

“Of course, my lord.”

The winter sun offered light but no warmth as the elves of the Woodland Realm snaked their way through the thin forest. Several days had passed since Galadriel had visited Thranduil in the wood, and every night he had dutifully walked into the forest and shed a layer of his burden, forcing his sorrow and guilt into the form of a dark red seed. He had dug into the earth and buried his sins each evening. He did feel better, day by day, as the pains in his chest slowly eased and the cloud of fireflies grew, but the shadow of a worry grew in his mind, and even their friendly lights could not douse it. He did not know how to care for the seeds of his sins. Perhaps Tauriel could offer a word of guidance.

As the noon hour passed and the shadows grew shortest, Thranduil considered his companion. Tall, rangy, with long auburn hair always braided out of her way, the better to fight, to defend her land and her people. She was a superb example of Silvan capability. How had he never noticed before?

His heart stabbed at him. Less painful than before, but still startling. His hand twitched toward his chest. Tauriel noticed his movement and turned concerned eyes on him.

“My lord. If you will permit me, you are not as well as you claim. Were you wounded in the battle? Why have you not let anyone tend you?”

His old self would have laughed at her for presuming to believe he was so clumsy as to have been injured fighting mere playthings of the Shadow. In his current state, however, he felt his eyes sting with tears at how nearly true her words were. “I was not wounded. Not in the way you think.”

Tauriel’s eyes raked his form from head to toe as if seeking evidence of injury, but he strode beside her in good health—and better than he deserved. “If… if I may be of assistance in some small way, my lord… you have but to ask.”

“Then I shall ask.” The words flew from his lips before he could stop them. He frowned at himself. Such sudden bursts of comradeship flared like signal fires on distant hills. Had he lit them, or had she? Their significance was nearly lost to him, but a deep and abiding instinct forced him closer to their glow. His heart twitched and ached, and the fireflies in his mind danced aflutter.

“Anything, my lord.”

 _Anything? I do not know the way. What shall I ask_? he begged the fireflies. In response, words leapt from his tongue. “Tell me of Kili, please. I think I am ready to listen, if you are ready to speak.”

Tauriel’s face paled beneath her light tan, and her mouth opened, but no words issued forth. She turned her face from him, and Thranduil feared that, in his own distress, he had brought more to her. Was she not grieving as well? A true love, a _real_ love, that he had denied to her face. A love that he had threatened to kill her for believing in.

His heart wrenched, tearing open a seam that had healed only the night before as he planted his latest sorrow seed. He gasped with the pain of it, felt the heat of fresh blood swelling in his chest. “I… I am sorry, I did not mean to—” he began.

“No, my lord, you only caught me unaware.” Tauriel turned back and met his eyes. Hers were clear, but his were clouded, once again, with unshed tears. Tauriel instinctively clutched at his wrist to steady him. “My lord, you cause me no undue pain. It pleases me to speak of my love, if it pleases you to hear it.”

Thranduil blinked his guilt away and let in a slow, soothing breath. He had not stumbled this time. He had not hurt someone whose heart was already grieving. His relief made him feel faint. _So far. I’ve fallen so far behind. How will I ever regain my stride? I do not deserve to walk ahead like this._

“My lord? Would you like to lean on me?”

He looked down. Tauriel offered her arm to his. A guise of companionable strolling to disguise his weakness before his people. Wordlessly, he accepted. She wrapped her arm around his, tucking herself against his side in order to offer support should he falter.

Thranduil blinked. “They will wonder.”

But Tauriel strode step by step with him, bright and determined. “Let them. I am the captain of the king’s guard, and I do as I am commanded. Where shall I begin, my lord?”

A fond smile flickered over his lips, sparking another firefly in his forest glen. “Tell me of your first meeting. I am curious to know why you singled Kili out among all the other dwarves.”

Tauriel chuckled, a low, soft rumble. “I rather think he chose me, my lord. For he alone treated me as if I were already a friend. The others—even his brother—were too caught in their worries. Their quest was vital to them, and time was indeed running out. They sought a new plan, an escape, or wrestled with the notion of utter failure. Yet, in the midst of all those cares, Kili settled onto the floor of his cell, calmed himself, and accepted where he was. Once he had done that, he found peace. And from peace, happiness.”

“From peace, happiness,” Thranduil murmured. The thought would not settle in his mind—it fluttered away through the trees of his forest glen.

“Kili knew himself well, my lord. He had no illusions, no expectations of a future he could not attain. He lived in the moment, reveled in it, and found pleasure in simple beauty. He was enthralled by my tales of the Feast of Starlight. He could see the world as I saw it, and he treasured its beauty. And then, my lord, he offered me his own stories, of glorious and rare things I had never seen. I had shown him beauty, and he reciprocated. His heart was pure and honest, and he saw value in the things that are everywhere around us. In truth, his love of beauty is why I began to love him. Because what else is an elf, but one who loves the world, my lord—the world and everything in it?”

The forest glen that sheltered the fireflies in Thranduil’s mind began to pry its branches up and away, revealing a starry sky of such momentous glory that his breath caught in his throat. _The Feast of Starlight – it is memory, rich and pure._ Tingles shot through his body from head to toe. Gently, ever so gently, the brightest stars began to flicker, then to flutter. With starlit wings, they floated down among the fireflies and danced there.

_Kili. Kili. Kili. You were meant to find us. You were not meant to die. You, bright of eye and wide of heart, strode into my realm unafraid. You saw more beauty there than I did. I do not think I wish to die anymore. But how do I repay you, or Tauriel, for letting you perish, when you were more an elf than I?_

“My lord, do you need to stop and rest?”

“Hmm?”

“You have been leaning on me for some while. Have you heard anything I have said?”

“I have. I have.”

Evening drew near, but with Tauriel by his side, supporting him body and soul, Thranduil walked further than he ever had. A thick copse of yew made for a fine stopping point, but when Tauriel escorted him to his golden tent and made to leave for the evening, he stopped her.

“Wait a moment. Please.”

She turned back to face him. “My lord?”

“I wish to thank you. For today. You were very kind.”

“I? My lord, it is _you_ who have become very kind.” Her face fell as she realized what she’d just accused him of. “If I may say so, my lord.”

He merely nodded. “You may. I deserve that. Come. Drink with me. I have a further request.”

Tauriel hesitated.

“Not to worry. It is spring water. Though my cares feel heavier, I find I can see them as they are when my head is clear.”

A relieved sigh escaped Tauriel’s lips. It told Thranduil more than he wanted to know about her years serving a king in his cups. He looked down, poured a second silver cup for her, and offered it without meeting her eyes.

Her warm fingers brushed his, and she held the cup for a long moment before taking it. Slowly, he looked up. His eyebrows raised in apology, and hers in forgiveness. She saluted him with the silver cup. “How could I fault my king, who has ever done for his people what he deemed best? We will follow you home, my lord. We will follow you anywhere.”

Thranduil’s fingers began to tremble. _I lead only to death._ He could not raise the cup to return her salute, and it tumbled from his grasp, spilling across the dry grass. “Oh!” He clutched at his hand to stop the shaking and found it ice cold. “No, no…” He backed away in horror, knocking over his chair.

“My lord! What is the matter?” Tauriel rushed forward, her own cup abandoned on the table.

Thranduil stumbled and fell, eyes wide with fright, pressing his hand against his chest in a futile effort to warm his icy fingers.

Tauriel was at his side in an instant. “My lord, what must I do?”

The soft line of sunset slowly climbed the golden silk of the tent wall above Thranduil’s head. His eyes caught its bright glow and widened. “I have waited too long. It has begun.” He stared at his hand, gone icy white and numb to the touch. “I did not understand…”

“What, my lord? What do you need?”

His eyes locked onto hers. “I need your help. Get me to the forest. And stay with me. I will also need Kili’s help tonight.”

“Kili? How?” But Tauriel was already hauling her king to his feet and draping his long arm across her shoulders. She half-dragged him out of his tent. “A horse! The king needs a horse, _now_!”

Thranduil managed to cling to Tauriel’s waist as she spurred their mount into the yews that surrounded a narrow stream which trickled out of a rocky cliff. His arms were losing feeling, and he bumped painfully behind her, unable to cling to the horse with his useless legs. “I am sorry… I am sorry…” His words were a meaningless refrain lost in the galloping of the horse’s hooves.

Once they were out of sight of the elven camp and deep within the yews, she slowed the loyal beast to a gentle walk which belied the tension in her voice. “Where do we go, my lord?”

“Here will do. I-I cannot…”

“Then we have arrived.” Tauriel slid from the horse, turned, and caught Thranduil as he fell into her arms. Gently, she rested him on the thick loam and cradled his head in her arms. “My lord?”

He was so cold, but her face shone like starlight above him, and he smiled as he basked in her glow. “Give me your hands, Tauriel.”

She rested his head in her lap, and he drew her hands to his chest and held them cupped in his palms, as Galadriel had done. He turned her hands toward each other.

“Now, attend.”

Shivering with extreme cold, Thranduil forced his mind to concentrate. The faces of the dead loomed before him. His long centuries of neglecting his own child as he hid from his own grief. The way he had shaped the very land itself to protect him from his feelings. How every choice built on the previous one. How he stripped his people of their joy by stripping himself of his sorrow.

The seed fell, complete, into Tauriel’s hands. But instead of a solid, deep red, the seed bore slender bands of white. Thranduil cradled her hands and the seed within them. Heat rushed beneath his skin, prickling it, warming him to life again. His heart seized, but gently, and several small rents sealed themselves shut against further hurts. Dozens of fireflies bearing white-banded wings fluttered into a silent, soft maelstrom and spilled up toward the starry sky in his mind.

“M-my lord? What has happened? What is this seed?”

Thranduil lay sprawled across her lap, his hair askew and firefly-lit in the gloaming, and laughed. A deep, true laugh of relief and truth and love, it rang forth from his lips and shook the yews. They shivered with delight at the king’s pleasure, and the air warmed around them.

Tauriel looked around her in shock. “My lord, I do not understand. Please.”

Thranduil held up a hand, and she pulled him upright until he sat beside her. He took the seed from her hands. “The Lady Galadriel showed me what I must do in order to lead my people, Tauriel. I must create these sorrow seeds each night as we journey home. And I must plant them. I must also find a way to tend them in the future, to guard travelers from encountering them unawares, for I will not leave the world to fend against my guilts alone.”

Tauriel offered a crisp nod. “I will help you, my lord. It can be done.”

Thranduil paused. He had not thought to ask for her aid with the task, yet there it lay, freely offered.

She continued, “Will you grow cold again tomorrow night if you do not travel to the forest soon enough? I will make sure we stop at an early hour. I can send scouts ahead—my lord?”

Thranduil’s mouth had fallen open, and he felt as if he were seeing Tauriel with his own eyes for the very first time. His laughter, his spark of joy, suddenly made sense. He lifted the heavy seed into her line of sight. “The red of the seed is my regret, my sins, my sorrows. The white, I can only believe, came from you. From Kili?”

Tauriel nodded slowly, her eyes fixed upon the seed pinioned in his fingers. “I felt your thoughts as you formed the seed, my lord. I could not bear to let you dwell on them alone. Such suffering should never be hoarded, if I may say so. So I dwelt on my love for Kili, on the joy of his spirit, the warmth of his laugh, the light in his eyes.” Her finger skimmed a white band in the heavy seed. “He is there, my lord, as you requested. You had his help, after all.”

The fireflies in Thranduil’s mind spun in an ecstasy of light. “You would have saved him, except for me. My greed.”

Her eyes held his steadily, devoid of blame. “Yes, my lord.”

Thranduil sensed her heart, and felt it with new feeling. Perhaps not all of Tauriel’s memory of Kili had been bonded with the seed. Perhaps the young dwarf’s love of life and beauty might sprout in him, as well. “Might I ask, captain, if it may in some small way ease your heart to rescue me in his stead?”

Tauriel inhaled sharply through her nose.

The fireflies scattered in a panic. “No, I only meant—”

Tauriel clasped her hands around the seed and pushed his hand down out of view. “It does not matter what you meant, my lord. You are my king, and I am sworn to follow and obey you. It is my duty—no. It is my _joy_ to serve you. I was unaware of how endangered you feel in your extreme distress. I wish that you had come to me sooner.”

“How could I? After what I have done to you. How dare I ask anything of you?”

Tauriel thinned her lips. “Plant the seed, and I shall tell you.”

Thranduil stared at the seed, red and white, an unnatural pairing of love and guilt. Kili’s seed. Tauriel had loved him. Thranduil had gotten him killed. With sudden determination, he carved a space for the seed and planted it wrist deep in the soil between him and Tauriel. He pressed the soil back into place and let his hand rest atop it.

Tauriel rested her hand on his. “You dare ask of me because you are my king. Because you are my _friend_.” Her insistent blue gaze forced him to acknowledge her words, to accept them as truth.

With his eyes locked on hers, he murmured, “Can you ever, even a thousand years hence, bear the thought of forgiving me? I have failed everyone, but none so much as you, Tauriel. I… regret so very deeply…” Tears edged Thranduil’s eyes again. “If I could but change time, I would. I would.” He glanced down at the seed’s new home. “I am the flaw in the garden.” He clutched at his chest again, smudging his silk with dirt.

Tauriel leaned forward and pressed her hand against his chest as well. “My lord, these pains you have… I fear that withholding my forgiveness from you will only endanger you further. Please, accept it. Our difficulties are in the past. Like this seed. Let only sweet friendship sprout from this fertile soil, I beg of you. My king, please, I cannot bear the thought of my anger causing your death!”

Thranduil raised wide blue eyes to meet hers. Under her touch, with her words, the spasms in his chest eased. “You are my starlight, Tauriel. My memory of what was. My memory of the truth, rather than the story I told myself. Your forgiveness blesses me beyond reason. I do not deserve you, and I am all the more humbled by your friendship after what I have done. Do not let me chase you away as I have chased away my son. Stay with me, with our people. I… I have much need of you.”

Tauriel boldly leaned forward and pressed her forehead against her king’s. With closed eyes, they communed in the space between hearts—now full of fireflies and starlight—and the warmth of a young dwarf’s laughter. Tauriel’s whisper spoke within his soul. “I have nowhere else pressing to be, my lord.”

“I regret that I never…” Thranduil took a breath and tried again. “I am much gladdened that I may renew my acquaintance with you, Tauriel. You are a true and worthy elf. You always were.”

“I know it, my lord. I am pleased that you do, too. Are you ready to return yet?”

“Yes, I am well enough.”

They rose, and Tauriel fetched the horse, who had been lurking curiously nearby. Thranduil decided to walk back to camp in the gathering dusk, and Tauriel and the horse kept pace beside him.

“This time tomorrow, then, my lord? And, every night?”

“Until we reach the border of the Woodland Realm, yes.”

“I shall be prompt, then.”

“As ever, your best qualities do you credit, Captain.”

Tauriel hesitated before speaking further. “My lord, you spoke of a flaw in the garden.”

He kept his gaze forward. “I did.”

“Only one who knows the dangers of flaws can guard against them. Is not the most diligent gardener the one who has already seen his garden suffer blight?”

The fireflies in Thranduil’s mind settled as if blown to the ground by a gentle but irresistible breeze. They landed in a garden of bursting color, and in their sweet-scented center stood the Lady Galadriel, her hand extended in smiling invitation. Thranduil was transported entire into the garden, and he took her hand with trembling wonder.

Around him, in his mind’s eye, all the way to the edge of the forest glen, blossoms erupted with glorious, coruscating color, spiraling in swirls of red and gold, blue and purple and white, with striped leaves, spotted sepals, glowing stems, and nodding petals. Towering shrubs laden with bobbing lances of pink and purple were mantled at the ankles by thick white ground cover that raised tiny crowns to the sky. Clusters of roses and tulips brushed the king’s robes. Pebbled walkways swirled among the glorious blooms, inviting him to explore.

“Plant the seed of your love, Thranduil. Let it thrive here, and tend it well.”

Humbled, King Thranduil dropped to one knee, still holding her hand. “Yes, my lady,” he breathed.

She lifted her hand free and rested it upon his silken white hair. “Well done, cousin. Well done. May we meet again, in your gardens.”

Then she, and her vision, were gone. Thranduil gasped in the cold night air. “Soil,” he blurted. “I need soil. No more stone and hardened roots. I must have fertile soil, and in it I will replant the souls of my people. We shall grow again— _together_ —and grace the world with our beauty. We shall grow strong enough to hold back the wind and the rain, the very Shadow itself.”

Thranduil returned to the garden in his mind, where he still knelt, surrounded by more beauty than he ever expected to see in his long lifetime. In the eastern corner, from whence all pure things hail, the horizon beyond the forest glen lightened. The sun, long beyond his sheltered senses, had finally begun to rise. Its light burst across his face, lit his eyes, danced among the pale strands of his hair, and caressed his beaming smile. _Live_.

Thranduil led his people ever homeward, with Tauriel faithfully by his side. Every evening, they planted another sorrow seed together. And every night, the white bands grew, while the heavy red retreated.

By the time Elvenking Thranduil finally set foot in the beloved forest of his homeland, he had already begun to dream of flowers.


End file.
